Chapter 14 5. China: The Rise of Political Soft Power

Many specific practices in the process of China's modernization do not necessarily have universal significance, but the thoughts behind these practices, especially "seeking truth from facts", "harmonious middle way", "step by step", "treating both symptoms and root causes", and "harmony without diversity", etc. Probably of fairly general significance.Following this line of thought, China should be able to calmly deal with and eventually effectively deal with and solve the various severe challenges it faces.These ideas also constitute China's political soft power.

We often say: Chinese hardware has made great progress, but software cannot keep up.Generally speaking, the author fully agrees with this statement.Our subway is so new and beautiful, but people are crowded to get on the train and don't queue up, which can explain this problem. The quality of our citizens still needs to be greatly improved. We still have a lot to do in this regard.But if you think about it carefully, is China's hardware progress so great, is it also part of the credit for our own software?Our infrastructure construction, from highways to airports and ports, has developed so rapidly, isn't it also due to our own guiding ideology and related decisions?By extension, why have we been able to lift more than 400 million people out of poverty, while poverty has continued unabated in most developing countries?Why can we resist "shock therapy"?Why can we avoid the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the financial tsunami in 2008?How did we overcome the SARS crisis?How did we successfully pass the five-year transitional period of joining the WTO and become the world's largest exporter?How did we unite as one to deal with the 2008 freezing disaster and the Wenchuan earthquake?How do we organize the most exciting and memorable Olympic Games and World Expo in the world?How did we achieve basic health insurance so quickly in a country of 1.3 billion people, when nearly 50 million people in the United States are uninsured?

The answer to these questions is actually China's soft power. China's soft power can not only be Tai Chi, Chinese cuisine, freehand brushwork, calligraphy, Kung Fu, dragon dance, Confucius Institute, etc., but equally important, or even more important, is political soft power, political values, governance models, etc., and This kind of soft power is not only attractive to China, but also to other countries and people in the world. To be soft power of international significance, it must be able to respond to the many challenges our world presents.The world today is facing four major problems: the first is poverty and development; the second is peace and war, including terrorism; the third is conflict among different civilizations and the issue of tolerance; the fourth is ecological environmental protection.Can the Western model solve these problems?Experience so far says: no.Nor will it be easy for the foreseeable future.But the Chinese model has brought hope to people.

The Western-dominated world economic order has exacerbated poverty in most developing countries.Economist Angus Maddison (Angus Maddison) studied the laws of economic development in the world for thousands of years and concluded that during most of this long history, the gap between rich and poor countries was basically 2 :1, but since the industrial revolution in the 18th century, the process of widening the gap between rich and poor around the world has been greatly accelerated.According to calculations by American scholar Jared Diamond, the per capita resource consumption in developed countries is now 32 times that of developing countries.Half of the world's population still lives in poverty, and 800 to 900 million of them still don't have enough to eat.But even so, the West still strives to use all means to consolidate the benefits it has already obtained.In this extremely unfair international economic order, China insists on blazing its own path of development and has accumulated rich experience in poverty eradication, which will inspire the solution to the world's poverty problem.The concept of "mutual benefit and win-win" proposed by China in the process of helping developing countries is also widely welcomed by developing countries.

On the issue of war and peace, in the past few years, the "democracy export" model led by the United States has led to more turmoil in the world. How many lives have been caused by the Iraq war alone?How much property damage?How many civilians were displaced?The threat of terrorism to the United States and the world continues unabated.Wherever you go in the world, the US embassies abroad are the most fortified, surrounded by barriers and guards.The United States, despite having the strongest military and the largest arms spending in the world, has a lower sense of self-security than at any point in its own history.In contrast, the Chinese adhere to the concepts of "peace is the most precious" and "don't do to others what you don't want to be done to others", and advocate solving the problem of international terrorism through both symptoms and root causes and international cooperation. This seems to be more important. Feasible ideas.

On the issue of the clash of civilizations, the conflict between the West and the Islamic world has been unresolved for a long time, and even has a tendency to intensify.A few years ago, a Danish artist published cartoons mocking Muhammad, the founder of Islam, which caused an uproar in Islamic countries. In 2008, when some Islamic extremists threatened to assassinate the painter, all Danish newspapers decided to republish the cartoon, sparking a new round of civilisation.As far as my own observation is concerned, Denmark can be regarded as one of the most enlightened countries in the Western world. However, when dealing with cartoon incidents, the mainstream Danish media still cannot break away from the Western tradition of confrontation and zero-sum games.Given this, how can we expect the West to show a more enlightened and inclusive attitude in dealing with its relations with Islamic countries?On the contrary, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University himself put it quite frankly. He said: "In a pluralistic world where multiple civilizations coexist, the responsibility of the West is to protect its own interests, not to promote the interests of other nations, and it should not Solve problems for nations that have little interest in the West.” The Chinese believe in “harmony without diversity,” and that different civilizations are interrelated, respect each other, accommodate each other, and learn from each other’s strengths to complement each other’s weaknesses. This is a more brilliant view than Huntington’s.This is also one of the main reasons why there are few religious wars in Chinese history.This kind of thinking in China can better resolve the contradictions between different civilizations than the self-centered thinking in the West.

On the issue of environmental protection, the United States is the country that emits the most greenhouse gases in the world. Its population is less than one tenth of the world's, but it consumes one quarter of the world's energy.Poor countries in the world are least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, and rich countries are most responsible, but the biggest victims of global warming are poor countries and poor people.Just as it was impossible to abolish slavery in the American South by relying on one person, one vote, it is impossible to change Americans' consumption habits of wasting world resources today by relying on one person, one vote.The same is true in Europe. Although the awareness of environmental protection is unprecedentedly high and energy consumption is lower than that of the United States, it is not easy for most Europeans to change their wasteful lifestyle.China's environmental protection is still not satisfactory, but from our development model, more effective environmental protection ideas and methods than those in the West may be bred.The characteristic of the Chinese model is that once a broad consensus is formed, our overall efficiency in solving problems is much higher than that of the Western system.When this soft power is applied to the cause of environmental protection, it will also have a global impact.The world has noticed with amazement that in just a few years, China has rapidly moved to the forefront of the world in new energy fields such as electric vehicles, solar energy, and wind energy.

In short, the China model, while still in its infancy, has demonstrated its unique influence in addressing the four challenges above, and this influence will only increase as China rises.In chapter five, I will further explore the issue of ecological protection. The relative success of the Chinese model has won China a valuable right to speak.In the past, it was either the Soviet model or the Western model.After the end of the Cold War, the Soviet model withdrew from the stage of history with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The mainstream of the West believed that this was the end of history, and the rest was a point of no return: the whole world would embrace the Western political system.But the post-Cold War situation shows that world affairs are much more complicated. If the Western system is really applicable universally, why did it fail repeatedly in the third world, from the Philippines to Haiti to Iraq?

The China model responds to some fundamental challenges facing the world today: Do developing countries have the right to give top priority to poverty eradication and modernization?Does it have the right to derive institutional arrangements suitable for its own national conditions from the interaction between its own tradition and modernity?Do you have the right to prioritize according to your own situation in the process of realizing various human rights?Do you have the ability to come up with your own core values ​​and influence the mainstream value system dominated by Western thought so far?China's experience has given affirmative answers to all these questions, and these answers also reflect China's world vision and human consciousness today.

The relative success of the China model has brought about not only the rise of China, but also a new way of thinking, a new way of thinking, and maybe even a new paradigm shift, which cannot be achieved by existing Western theories and discourses. Explain new insights clearly.In this sense, the rise of China is also the rise of China's political soft power, which will help solve the challenges China faces, help developing countries get rid of poverty, effectively manage global issues, and influence the future evolution of the international political and economic order. , have a profound impact.The Chinese model will continue to improve and bring more surprises to the world.